318 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    whaddup doll-face

    • waffles

      I’m going to assume you’re talking to me. Good morning!

      • Tres Cool

        Im unsupervised for the next 2 weeks. So, any port in a storm.

        How YOU doin’ ?

      • Swiss Servator

        I though Jugsy was back home?

      • Tres Cool

        Only for the weekend.
        Shipped her back out to the jungles of NYC for another fortnight.

  2. The Late P Brooks

    Derived from several packages of financial aid distributed to states and localities by Congress, California has roughly $5.2 billion at the ready — an amount that Jason Elliott, a senior counselor to Gov. Gavin Newsom on housing and homelessness, said should be more than enough to cover unpaid rents, according to the Associated Press.

    “Sure, what the hell. It’s not my money.”

    • Rat on a train

      Can I back not-pay?

      • Tonio

        ^This. The Chump Effect writ large.

    • juris imprudent

      Spend it now or wipe your ass with it later.

  3. Not Adahn

    New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history Sunday when she became the first openly transgender athlete chosen

    So, who were the closet trans olympians — other than Kaitlyn of course?

    • Rat on a train

      Start your search with figure skaters.

    • hayeksplosives

      I think Caster Semenya was found to be intersex when she was finally forced to submit to testing.

      Not sure what exactly to do in those cases. Fortunately they are quite rare.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        You treat those cases as exceptions to be ruled on individually.

        Otherwise, the standard rules apply.

      • Sean

        Caster Semenya

        Oddly, not her porn name…

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Caster Semenonya would have been perfection.

      • WTF

        I would say male levels of hormones = male for competition
        Female levels of hormones = female for competition
        And testosterone levels should be the driving factor.

      • Tundra

        Or just flip a coin. These situations are so vanishingly rare I can’t fathom spending much time on it.

      • Not Adahn

        Yeah. If they’ve been living their life as a woman, and they’re intersex, how is that different than being Yao Ming? Everyone knows that Chinese people are short, but we wouldn’t exclude him because he’s a freak.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That still poses a problem in that those who developed with testosterone have significant physical advantages over those who did not.

        And that’s not to mention that I have no interest in helping to promote transgender hormone treatment and the permanent physical damage it’s doing to young people.

      • SDF-7

        Not that I’m a big sports person — so don’t care that much, but why not something like the boxing weight class system? Don’t know exactly how you set the metrics — but basically have ranges of performance — if you’re in that range, you compete with others in that range regardless of body type / actual gender, etc. Set the range boundaries sufficient such that men-acting-as-women can’t easily be just at the top of the range, and I would think this would sort itself out. (Well, other than locker rooms, probably… in which case, like bathrooms — just go with individual stalls with doors/showers?)

        Probably won’t work for some reason — but seems a fair solution to me if it would.

      • db

        USPSA has a classification system that pits shooters of different abilities against people within their performance class. Everybody shoots the same match, but D class shooters don’t compete against GMs directly–they’re ranked among classes. Movement between classes is based on average scores over a number of matches within divisions. Once you move up a class, you can’t go back down unless you make a special petition backed up by medical or other evidence. I can’t see a reason why something like that couldn’t be used in most individual competitive sports.

        But, considering what one has to do to get an Olympic spot, you’re already talking about some of the best athletes in the world, so they’ve already been classified to the highest level.

      • Not Adahn

        One caveat: there are no prizes for winning D class. You have to be at least C class to get a prize above your overall ranking.

        And that prize will undoubtedly be a 12oz bag of Black rifle Coffee.

      • db

        Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, I was shooting at the high-C class level. I shot at the Limited Nationals, and my scores were in the mid-B class range for that match, and the Nationals score was weighted heavily enough in the classification system that it catapulted me from mid-C to low-mid-B class. So I had to up my game to continue to be competitive in my new class.

      • Not Adahn

        There’s something about the way classifications are calculated, but it seems to me that there a serious difference in ability between C and B shooters. I routinely beat C shooters, but I’ve scored higher than a B shooter on exactly one stage ever.

      • db

        It takes a lot of practice to get from C to B. Once you’re in B, you’re primed to do the work to go to A. Then M is not too bad. A friend of mine took 2 or 3 years to get to A, then made M and GM in Limited within a year.

        It is possible to get a GM classification by simply practicing classifier stages, but then your scores suck. But some people (few, really) just want to be able to say they are classified high, and don’t care about match scores.

      • Not Adahn

        Something has changed for the better this year. Instead of things happening in slow-motion, it feels like everything is happening in normal time, but the clock is showing less time has elapsed than I thought. I used to get some decent to good scores by pushing for as fast as I could go and occasionally getting lucky, now I feel like I’m taking time before/between shots and that I could push much harder, but my times are faster. I can only conclude that I’m actually thinking faster than I used to.

      • db

        Have you gotten to the point yet where you see the slide cycle and follow the front sight all the way because so see so much faster? When you’re capable of that, stuff falls into place.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Probably won’t work for some reason

        Because then it becomes a well populated men’s division, a well populated women’s division, and a division with 4 trannies who can’t hack it in the men’s division but are physically stronger/faster/whatever than the women.

      • Mojeaux

        XX or XY. Boom. Non negotiable.

      • Festus

        That is a very unhappy person. Poor Stan.

  4. blackjack

    That’s why Gavin thinks he’s going to survive his recall. He’s got a shit-ton of tax revenue to bribe people with. A couple of billion on the homeless, 100 million to ease the pain he inflicted on pot shops, another few billion to pay people’s rent, eventually we’ll realize that he’s just like Santa Clause and love him again. Might even work. He want the election to happen while all that money is getting doled out, of course.

    • Nephilium

      I’m just waiting for the checks to come with a pre-filled out absentee ballot to retain Gavin.

      • db

        With some editing, could be Bee material

      • Swiss Servator

        “Sign these two things – the back of the check, and the pre-filled absentee ballot attestation.”

      • Tonio

        [golf clap]

    • waffles

      And it’s going to work, unless the power grid goes down. Rolling blackouts are what got California Arnold.

      • Chafed

        Summer is here so we will find out soon.

    • OBJ FRANKELSON

      Gavin Newsome is an infrastructure.

  5. Not Adahn

    The Black Student Graduation Ceremony also welcomed “those who may not have credits to participate in [the mainstream] graduation,”

    Something something low expectations.

    • Tonio

      It starts with participation trophies and ends with being operated on by someone who always wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t actually do the coursework.

      • AlexinCT

        You talk like a fag and your shit is all retard, scro….

      • AlexinCT

        I lurned how to be a doktor by play’n OPERASHUN!

        I can’t remember if I told the story here or not, but I visited a relative in the hospital once and he had a room mate that was not melanin-challenged and looked to be in real bad shape. While there, my relative had an Asian doctor that had been in to see em drop by to chat about an impending surgery. After the doctor left, the rest of us were chatting when a black young man came in and introduced himself to the relative’s roommate as his doctor. The young man a big smile on his face – I suspect it was cause he was helping a brotha and expected to be greeted with a “right on!” – only to have that smile destroyed by the patient when he told the young black doctor that his life was in the balance and that he wanted a white or Asian doctor, cause he was not going to take a risk with an affirmative action candidate.

        Everyone visiting the relative, and the relative, choked and all talking died off. The young doctor left with anger on his face, and last we knew, the relative’s roommate got the same Asian doctor as the relative, and he made it, but that experience left a few more left leaning relatives feeling like someone had pissed in their progressive lunch bowl…

  6. The Late P Brooks

    We’ll get the money from Scrooge McDuck- he’s got way more than he deserves

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against a gas tax proposal under consideration in the Senate, as she argued that ramping up IRS enforcement would net more revenue.

    At a Monday press conference, Psaki said the administration had projected that the bipartisan group’s planned gas tax measure would raise around $40 billion in revenue.

    The Biden administration is pushing to pour $80 billion into the IRS as part of its infrastructure plans. The White House views it as a key way to generate new revenue from wealthy Americans who pay little or nothing in federal taxes every year.

    She said additional tax enforcement “would raise a great deal more, by multiples of what the gas tax would raise,” while she also noted “it would fall on predominantly wealthy Americans and just ensure they’re paying the taxes they owe.”

    A March study from IRS researchers and academics indicated that the top 1% of Americans fail to report about a quarter of their income to the IRS. Then underreporting incomes is twice as high for the top 0.1%, the research found.

    Top Men.

    And Womynz.

    • WTF

      If it’s not reported, how do they know? Sounds like a bullshit study to me.

    • kbolino

      wealthy Americans who pay little or nothing in federal taxes every year

      Starting with those who make $200k or more a year, and continuing for all higher income levels as well, a greater proportion of income tax is paid than the proportion of income received. The average effective tax rate on all reported income in the U.S. in 2018 was 18.3%. All income levels below $200k pay less than that, all income levels above $200k pay more. 20% of all households pay 80% of all income taxes, and less than 6% of all households pay 60% of all income taxes.

      The statement I quoted is such a blatant but widely believed lie that it is sometimes amazing to behold.

      • juris imprudent

        It’s almost like it is a Große Lügen that some bad man wrote about.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        But that Bezos guy, and the other outliers!

      • kbolino

        There’s only one “legitimate” reason to go after Bezos, Gates, et al. and it’s not to raise revenue, since forcing them to sell their assets to pay the tax would immediately devalue those assets to fire-sale prices (and even if it somehow didn’t get devalued, $100 billion one time is not that much to a government that takes in $1.8 trillion per year in income tax alone). It’s to take away their means. There is of course a certain populist appeal to doing that, but besides the ensuing capital flight and disincentive that it would create, there’s the more important question of who wields such power. The man, woman, or gender nonbinary they who gets to break the Bezoses and Gateses of the world would be no less than a dictator, if not in title then at least in actual effect.

      • juris imprudent

        The price drop due to a forced liquidation wouldn’t even hurt Gates/Bezos the most – it is how it would hit all of the smaller shareholders, like me.

      • kbolino

        It’s true that at a net worth of $1 billion instead of $100 billion they’d still be very rich indeed. But they wouldn’t be able to buy so much land, they wouldn’t get quite as much access to the media, the government, and the nonprofits, etc.

        However, at a broader level, you’re right that the knock-on effects would hit a lot of other people. Of course, to a populist, you and I are part of the problem too. To somebody who’s never owned a house, inflating property prices are a problem not a boon. To somebody who’s never had a 401k, inflating stock prices are the same.

    • ignoreLander

      40 billion to Big Daddy Gubmint is like a five dollar bill to you and me. But any way to tighten those screws, right?

    • Agent Cooper

      “bipartisan group’s planned gas tax measure would raise around $40 billion in revenue.”

      Why do they hate poor people?

  7. AlexinCT

    South Park can’t even satirize this.

    So which one of you degenerates would?

  8. Rat on a train

    Blackface’s emergency order expires somewhere around the end of the month. Masking without the advice of a licensed physician or osteopath and carrying on his person an affidavit from the physician or osteopath specifying the medical necessity for wearing the device and the date on which the wearing of the device will no longer be necessary and providing a brief description of the device will be a felony.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’m having a hard time parsing that.

      • db

        Sounds like the old fashioned “no masks in public because you will be assumed to be up to no good” policy would be back in effect?

      • Rat on a train

        Virginia has an anti-mask law. It is a felony to wear a mask to conceal your identity with a few exceptions. Why are there exceptions if intent to conceal is a requirement? A declared health emergency is one exception. A doctor’s note is another. Pre-COVID, there were arrests and prosecutions for otherwise non-criminal masking. I don’t believe there have been convictions, but it is an unnecessary law. If they can prove intent to conceal for a crime, can’t they prove intent to commit the crime?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Okay

        The language is unnecessarily obtuse, of course.

        For some reason, I think the only people that will be prosecuted will be the ones with CCLs or open carrying.

      • invisible finger

        “can’t they prove intent to commit the crime?”

        Sounds like work is involved. So no.

      • hayeksplosives

        I assume they have to make some allowances for female Muslim garb that covers the face.

        I don’t think there should be an exception for such garb, but I have no doubt that saying a woman can’t wear a niqab into a bank is some form of Islamophobia.

      • Rat on a train

        They’ll make allowances that are in the best interest of the state. It’s like so many laws that can be used to harass undesirables.

      • EvilSheldon

        You would think so, but no, there are no religious exemptions.

        It makes sense though, when you consider that the purpose of the law is to ensure the comfort of wimpy upper-class white leftists. Nothing makes a yuppie soyboi more uncomfortable than a woman covering her face in public out of a sense of modesty and religious obligation…

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I might argue that it’s both “Islamophobic” (or whatever label you feel okay about), AND misogynist.

        All this law does is make sure that Islamic women in VA will not have the ability to bank. Without economic freedom there is no freedom.

        I’m not religious at all, but I do hold a very healthy level of respect for religion and religious practices. They’re not to be fucked with.

        I’m not exactly sure how to get around the obvious: baddies with bad intent using a niqab solely as a means to conceal oneself during the commission of a crime, except to say freedom has consequences. And I’m good with that.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Let’s try that link again

    Psaki also said during the news conference the administration opposes a new charge for electric vehicle drivers — which most Republicans support — because it wants to spur growth in that industry. Electric cars only make up 2% of new cars and 1% of all cars on American roads, The New York Times reported.

    “The president wants to grow the electric vehicle industry, wants more people to buy electric vehicles, wants to make them accessible to people across the country,” she said. “That will help our climate [and] help create jobs in that industry as well.”

    Dementia. It’s not just for old people.

    • WTF

      Now, how about upgrading the power grid to accommodate all of those new electric vehicles.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Yes, they will need money for that too.

      • Drake

        And some more coal and oil power plants to supply the power.

    • Agent Cooper

      “Electric cars only make up 2% of new cars and 1% of all cars on American roads,”

      The market works?

      • Bobarian LMD

        And everyone who has an electric car, has a gas vehicle, probably a SUV, parked next to it for non-virtue signalling days.

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      “The president wants to grow the electric vehicle industry, wants more people to buy electric vehicles, wants to make them accessible to people across the country,” she said.”

      What if I can’t find a single fuck about what the president wants me to drive?

      That motherfucker doesn’t drive around for me, so he can kiss my ass.

  10. trshmnstr the terrible

    Japan to cap their Olympic spectators at 10,000 and allow only Japanese residents

    We were actually seriously contemplating going this year if they had opened it up. Sister in law and her husband (and soon to be born kiddo) live over there. *shrug*

    • Tres Cool

      “Man, those s̵a̵m̵o̵a̵n̵s̵ Japanese sure are a s̶u̶r̶l̶y̶ racist bunch.”

    • hayeksplosives

      Between the exclusion of the faithful Olympic tourists (they exist) and making a mockery of women’s sports by allowing mediocre male athletes in to moonlight as chicks, this might be the end of Olympic Games.

      Winning the games was already a white elephant for the host city. If they can’t even operate at capacity, who will want the next games???

      • Pope Jimbo

        The “city fathers” somewhere will. Why would they care if they have to fleece a bunch of the tax cattle?

        If their city gets the Olympics, they will get to rub shoulders with a lot of important people. They will also get to go to a ton of hospitality suites and other soirees. It is all good for them.

    • Urthona

      The Olympics were always a loss but can you imagine the buckets of money Japan is going to lose?

      Here covid basically doesn’t exist now. Is the same not true of Japan?

  11. waffles

    AZ audit winding down.

    I only hear about this when democrat lawmakers whine about it. Have they smartened up and stfu in order to get it to fly under the radar? I think there’s practically zero chance anything comes of this unless some epic open mouth and insert foot action occurs.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    Avery Brundage was a Class A asshole, but he would have strangled this transgender idiocy in its bassinet.

    • robc

      It is super easy, allow any genders to compete, but divide by biological sex.

      Then you only have to make a call on the rare xxy athlete and etc. And I think for them, it is easy…the two categories are “has a Y” and “no Y”.

  13. WTF

    CA to use $100 million to assist their marijuana industry in overcoming their arduous regulations.

    If the government was in charge of the Sahara Desert in ten years there would be a shortage of sand.

    • Rat on a train

      … if it stops moving, subsidize it.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Why not just cut back on the reg..ah, fuck it…

    • Count Potato

      OFFS!!

  14. The Late P Brooks

    Fap fap fap

    President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Philippines battles one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with over 1.3 million cases and more than 23,000 deaths.

    “You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” Duterte said in a televised address on Monday following reports of low turnouts at several vaccination sites in the capital Manila.

    There’s a man who takes public health seriously. Foochy approves.

    • Rat on a train

      Duterte, who in March 2018 cancelled the Philippines’ membership of the ICC’s founding treaty, repeated he will not cooperate with the probe, describing the ICC as “bullshit”.

      Why would I defend or face an accusation before white people. You must be crazy,” Duterte said, who after winning the presidency in 2016 unleashed an anti-narcotics campaign that has killed thousands.

      A latte liberal’s dilemma. I’m supposed to be pro ICC, but not if it is whites punching down on browns.

    • invisible finger

      A real minister of love.

    • EvilSheldon

      And this, kids, is why populists can’t be trusted.

      Yeah, they may be fighting your enemies for now, but they’ll turn on you in half a heartbeat.

    • DEG

      Interesting. WHO says people under 18 should not be vaccinated.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    If it’s not reported, how do they know? Sounds like a bullshit study to me.

    According to my model, you’re stealing from the government.

  16. db

    Caption for the lead photo on the Olympic link:

    New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard reacts after failing to lift in the snatch of the women’s +90kg

    • l0b0t

      Wasn’t that the lift that broke Laurel’s arm? It looks pretty twisty in the photo.

      • db

        Ouch.

        As far as Laurel Hubbard goes, it seems like people on both sides of the argument are being pretty shitty–saying things like “Laurel Hubbard isn’t the face of transgender in women’s sports” and “Do you really want Laurel Hubbard leading your charge?”

        They don’t care about the individual at all, only how they can serve the collective.

  17. robc

    Croatia-Scotland match today is straight-forward. Winner advances, loser goes home. Tie and both go home and Ukraine advances. Ukraine has 2 more chances to get off the bubble tomorrow, but this one is easy to understand.

    • Agent Cooper

      Go Cro-ats!

      (I just like their World Cup checkerboard kit design)

  18. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    Thanks for the lynx and the music. They were local to me, but I never saw them. Too bad for me!

    Men shouldn’t compete against women. That shouldn’t even need to be said. But, since Zuby said it best…

    Good article from FEE. It still astonishes me that I know more people – personally – who died from overdose and suicide than who were hospitalized or killed by the ‘vid.

    I hope y’all have a great day. Sunny and gorgeous here in the People’s Republic!

    I feel like Superman.

    • DrOtto

      As far as deaths, I know several pneumonia deaths from people who probably caught pneumonia due to masking and having compromised breathing. One of the few Covid deaths was a daughter’s friend’s grandfather. We had to watch her while her mom flew to NY to bury her father. He was a NY nursing home victim.

    • Festus

      Better Superman.

      • Tundra

        You are an amazing and thoughtful person, zwak.

        Thank you.

      • R C Dean

        She is up there with Elizabeth Hurley as an utterly improbably hot mid-50 year old. She loves to post her some bikini pics, god bless her.

  19. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Spoke to my local delegate to the state house this weekend.

    My question was what the priorities would be if the GOP managed to take back the house in Virginia this year. After some discussion of lesser items, I suggested that they should put neutering the governor’s office at the top of the list.

    Surprisingly, she agreed and indicated that the state senate, even though it is Democrat controlled, would be onboard with doing that. There are enough crossover votes to get it done.

    • Festus

      That sounds promising! Good for you getting in her face about the issue!

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Terror at thirty thousand feet

    Organizations representing airlines and workers sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday urging stricter enforcement and consequences for violent passengers after a year of increased incidents.

    Together, corporations and their workers are requesting the Department of Justice and Federal Aviation Administration push for “public prosecution” of passengers who act violently onboard flights. The letter was sent by 10 different organizations, including Airlines for America, Allied Pilots Association, Transport Workers Union of America, and Association of Professional Flight Attendants.

    “Specifically, the federal government should send a strong and consistent message through criminal enforcement that compliance with federal law and upholding aviation safety are of paramount importance,” the letter said.

    They later added that the enforcement should be “consistent and vigorous” by sending egregious cases to federal prosecutors.

    A separate letter was sent from Airlines for America to FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, thanking him for his commitment to inflight safety but also urging the agency to push for more strict punishments. Though the FAA has pushed for a “zero tolerance” policy for unruly passengers, it appeared many passengers have still not gotten the message, the organization wrote.

    “Unfortunately, we continue to see onboard behavior deteriorating into heinous acts, including assaults, threats and intimidation of crewmembers that directly interfere with the performance of crewmember duties and jeopardize the safety and security of everyone onboard the aircraft,” Airlines for America said.

    Just kick them off.

    The message people should be getting is, “Fuck flying, I quit. Let the stewardesses starve.”

    • kbolino

      Over-under on air travel getting nationalized? Buses and passenger trains used to be private, after all.

      • Tonio

        Aeroflot!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I was thinking the same thing.

        The pinnacle of safety and passenger conformity.

      • kbolino

        I’ll give old school socialists and trades unionists the limited credit that they were almost completely honest about the purpose of their endeavors: jobs. You don’t nationalize something to provide a better service; you nationalize it to keep (your) people employed.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Or to use it as a cudgel against undesirables, eg kulaks.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Slim to none in my opinon. What we will see I think is mission creep with TSA into the aircraft itself and even though db pointed it out that the pilot has ultimate authority, I can see some stupid regulations that actually give the TSA grunt authority on the plane.

      • DEG

        Thank you George W. Bush for the gift of the TSA.

    • db

      The pilot in command of an aircraft has ultimate authority over the safety of a flight (extending to its passengers). It is well within his or her authority to divert the flight to the nearest suitable airport and have the passenger removed.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I got nuthin’

      • juris imprudent

        Blacks life don’t really matter?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Sure people are dead but dat ass though.
      Seriously though, we fell over the precipice into the Grand Canyon of stupid a while back and we’re not getting out anytime soon.

    • Drake

      Obviously the work of white supremacists.

    • Agent Cooper

      Daniel. Patrick. Moynihan.

  21. The Late P Brooks
  22. db

    From Yusef’s story thread, but it may be of interest to those reading here:

    I know a few American pilots–who were originally US Airways (and its predecessors) pilots.

    As I understand it from the way I have been told, the way the merger was done, there is essentially a two tiered system where the American pilots union absolutely screwed over the US Air pilots in a number of ways, but especially in seniority. So pilots that came to the merger from American get primacy. There was some concession to US Air pilots where like 100 bids were “protected” for their most senior pilots to have a token group in the high realms of the seniority list, but as I understand it, all other USAir pilots rank lower than American pilots when applying for bids.

    Anyway, apparently, as part of the merger, this protected group was guaranteed through 12/31/2020. But when some USAir pilots got sweet bids (a friend of mine was awarded a 787 left-seat bid after flying the A320, A330 and 777) awarded late last year, THEIR OWN UNION filed a grievance against American for awarding the bids to USAir pilots. It went to Federal arbitration and the arbitrator decided that August 2020 was as good as December 2020. So bids that went to former USair pilots between August and January were rescinded and reawarded to American legacy pilots.

    • juris imprudent

      How does union leadership survive that? No, I don’t just mean getting kicked out of the leadership slot – I mean how do they not get killed for that?

      That’s the bad thing about getting old – the disincentive to kill someone so deserving of death diminishes. Sure life in prison at 30 will keep you in line, but you kick over 60 and it’s like I don’t really have all that much to lose anymore.

  23. Not Adahn

    We’re hiring! Anyone interested in jobs in The Woodlands? Not the Houston suburb, the Singapore one.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Sorry, I like chewing gum on occasion.

      • Not Adahn

        I’m still pissed off that I didn’t get the six weeks there that I was promised when I took this job.

        But yeah, too many things about my preferred lifestyle would prohibit me from actually living there.

    • juris imprudent

      JFC, Houston at least has a few months a year when the humidity isn’t miserable.

    • Tres Cool

      Sure. Where do I send my CV ?

      I actually turned down a well-paying job because it required me to re-locate to W. Pennsylvania.
      Tres Sr. is 82, and Ver. 2.0 is a teen, so now isnt the best time for me to move 5 hours away.

      • Not Adahn

        sgtalentacquisition@globalfoundries.com

        There are 20 jobs open, five managerial/paper pushing and the others that have at least some real-world interfacing, even if you’d spend most of your time at a keyboard (tank farm engineering, automation, etc.) There is a surveyor’s job open, which has got to be the cushiest variant of that profession I’ve even seen since they work indoors.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        I may know someone. Any website details you can share?

      • Not Adahn

        It looks like the details are on an internal sharepoint, so I probably shouldn’t. However they’re all over — specific process modules, facilities, planning, yield enhancement, etc.

  24. wdalasio

    So, I have my conversation with my boss this morning about my work location. It doesn’t matter right now, since I’m working from home. But, in 2022, I’ve been told I’ll have to spend some time in the office. I’m planning to suggest Charlotte. I can drive out and spend a day or two in a hotel per week. I don’t plan on going back to NY.

    • AlexinCT

      My employer is experiencing the same issue. In fact, they are freaking out because they sent a communication out telling people they are expecting everyone to start coming back in the office at the end of September, and that it now will be shared desks, and they got so much flack from people that the thing looks like it is snowballing into a giant disaster. Some people have already pointed out they will quit if forced to go back in.

      • Sean

        Are they covid scared?

      • AlexinCT

        Not sure, but they just don’t want to commute, pay for parking, and deal with the hassle of shared desk all so the managers that want to go back into the office can get time away from their families….

      • wdalasio

        At least my company has said we can work partially at home. Their aim is to have the average across the 90% of the company they’ve dubbed “hybrid flex” working in the office 3 days a week. Like I said, if I have to go to Charlotte a couple of days a week, I can live with it. It’s silly. I really didn’t need to be in the office to do my work even before the Great Rona Lockdown. Honestly, I think a lot of corporate America misgauged the whole thing. I think they thought people would be eager to go back to the office and a lot of people just aren’t feeling it. Maybe I sound cynical, but I think it’s because a lot of people making these plans are HR people, probably the most extroverted people in corporate America. They didn’t realize that, for a lot of us, working from home was an opportunity to do our jobs without dealing with them.

      • db

        Our senior leadership had HR survey all employees about remote work. The overwhelming response (including from the senior leadership) is that very few people want to come back to the office. The ones who do seem mostly to be middle managers who like to look out their office doors and see people in cubicles, so they can buttonhole someone and hand them more work. Most of the managers, though (me included), have adjusted well to managing remote employees.

        Our costs have gone down and sales have remained level or improved slightly. Interestingly, the one group in our company that seems to want to go back to the office is the sales and marketing group–the commercial people love to try to drag everyone into their orbits and it’s harder to do that when no one’s in the office.

      • AlexinCT

        The company I work for opened up a Q&A site for people to provide them with questions before a planned meeting where they want to discuss their “Return to work plan”, and shut the site down 2 days later, because every question of the 2250+ they had gotten in that timeframe was “WTF, and why do we need to do this?”.

        My favorite excuse provided by leadership was “Zoom fatigue”. They felt this was a good rationale to convince people to come into the office. They got hammered by people pointing out the Zoom fatigue was from having almost double the amount of meetings we had when we met in person because now people didn’t have to spend time going to conference rooms or chatting outside them after/before meetings. And the fact that they expected people in conference rooms to social distance still for a while, kind of killed that idea. Also note that practically every employee they hired during Kung Flu was not in a city where the company had an office, so these people will be ALWAYS working offsite.

        The only reason I can think of for me going back into the office is so I can take a few hours to go work out at the gym and avoid stupid people in stupid meetings…

      • db

        It’s interesting how some senior management teams differ on remote work. Ours (except for one EVP) are in favor of it. Sounds like yours are solidy against. Is it management style? Some of it in our company may be due to the fact that we have operations spread all over the country anyway, and many of us work “remotely” from different locations already, and have been doing so for long periods of time. That’s mostly on the manufacturing side, whereas our core commercial group is at the home office, and have relatively fewer remote workers, and those are more traditional sales and customer facing applications engineers.

      • R C Dean

        It’s interesting how some senior management teams differ on remote work.

        There’s a lot of apples, oranges, and kumquats in that basket.

        We never had meaningful remote work, across the whole organization, because you simply cannot have more than a small fraction of hospital employees work remotely. Even in those areas where remote work is a possibility, we made the decision that some positions should come in anyway (senior management), because the optics of front-line workers nose-to-nose with COVID positive patients while we cooled our heels at home was terrible. For other areas where we had remote work, our experience with productivity was mixed, but it was always a pretty small sample.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        My wife’s job told her everyone needs to come back in.

        After a year of 1. higher productivity, and 2. being much closer to the mythical “work-life balance”, she’s not having that shit.

        So she’s in the market for a new job that is remote.

  25. Grummun

    California’s legislature recently approved a $100-million plan to boost the Golden State’s struggling legal marijuana industry, which is floundering under an oppressive tax and regulatory climate.

    “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, tax it some more. If it stops moving, subsidize it.”

  26. Count Potato

    If you can’t make money selling drugs you’re doing it wrong.

    • juris imprudent

      California managed to legalize MJ and still make a black market in it attractive. You almost have to admire that kind stupidity.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        How much more expensive is it I wonder?

      • waffles

        It’s a lot. At least 20%, perhaps up to 40% when you count all the onerous testing and labeling requirements. The regulators got their fangs in and won’t let go. Most people who buy weed have no use for such requirements. It’s fucking weed brab.

    • wdalasio

      Interesting article I read in Superfreakonomics. Apparently, low-level drug dealers generally don’t make a lot of money selling drugs. The career path is similar to acting or banking. People get paid lousy when they first start in hopes that they’ll be one of the ones to make it up the greasy pole to where they can make a lot of money.

      • Trigger Hippie

        Depends on what your selling and how much you indulge in your own supply. Most low level pot dealers are selling just to have free smoke. Breaking even while keeping a fat bag on the ready, basically. More money for the harder drugs at the street level, especially after it’s been stepped on but a much higher risk of getting busted and dealing with maniacs on the regular. And of course, the real money is made by people who don’t use at all.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Does that mean I can sue the utility company if I crash into a pole or the city if I hit a tree?

    • db

      What if Neil Armstrong had fortified his mailbox?

    • db

      Cool, but that guy has never heard of muzzle discipline, apparently.

  27. Count Potato

    “The Washington Post has been branded ‘neoracist,’ and as promoting a ‘pseudoreligious movement’ for the latest episode of its podcast series urging readers to hold ‘white accountability groups’ and feel ‘deep shame’ over their race.

    Its series, hosted by Nicole Ellis and called the New Normal, launched last spring, originally to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. The podcast shifted to conversations about race after the death of George Floyd last year.

    New Normal’s latest episode, launched on Friday, discusses how white people can combat white supremacy, among them were forming so-called ‘white accountability groups.’

    Washington Post is condemned for video urging Americans to set up ‘white accountability groups’ and force themselves into ‘a period of deep shame’ over their skin color

    The video is the latest in a podcast series called The New Normal hosted by Nicole Ellis
    It aired on Friday, and suggests white people segregate themselves into groups to discuss how white people have harmed people of color over history
    One expert on the episode, Resmaa Manakem, suggests people take part in these groups for years before they can confront people of color
    Trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy said she took part in one such group and said it was important for white people to feel ‘a period of deep shame’
    The episode faced backlash, with one saying the suggestions were akin to a ‘pseudoreligious movement’ and constituted ‘neoracism’

    By Peter Belfiore For Dailymail.Com

    Published: 02:28 EDT, 22 June 2021 | Updated: 08:34 EDT, 22 June 2021

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    The Washington Post has been branded ‘neoracist,’ and as promoting a ‘pseudoreligious movement’ for the latest episode of its podcast series urging readers to hold ‘white accountability groups’ and feel ‘deep shame’ over their race.

    Its series, hosted by Nicole Ellis and called the New Normal, launched last spring, originally to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. The podcast shifted to conversations about race after the death of George Floyd last year.

    New Normal’s latest episode, launched on Friday, discusses how white people can combat white supremacy, among them were forming so-called ‘white accountability groups.’

    ‘An antiracist culture does not exist among white people,’ Trauma specialist and author Resmaa Manakem says introducing the concept. ‘White people need to start getting together specifically around race.’ ”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9711437/Washington-Post-condemned-video-urging-Americans-set-white-accountability-groups.html

    Do you know who else were white people getting together around race?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Ironically enough white people will start getting together around race if this nonsense continues but the results won’t be what WaPo’s hoping for.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s so blatantly obvious that you have to believe that a white identitarian movement is what they want.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Maybe it is, it’d be an excellent excuse for the mother of all crackdowns.

      • kbolino

        The true believers among the “anti-racists” are degenerate Calvinists who think that if you ever espouse anything against them you were a heretic all along. So yes, they want to flush out anyone who opposes them, and they’ll turn the ratchet slowly but consistently to do so.

    • Count Potato

      Crap, sorry about that. Edit fairy?

    • Akira

      Do you know who else were white people getting together around race?

      NASCAR?

      • Agent Cooper

        Insert Standing Ovation GIF here.

    • Bones

      I’m not sure what’s more frightening, the fact that people are either evil or stupid enough to push this lunacy, or the fact that people are dumb enough to give it credence. Either way, we are screwed.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Are things really changing or are they just trading a compromised high profile guy for a compromised low profile guy?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Hell if I know. I’m going to stay with the most cynical interpretation of events possible until proven wrong.

      • Festus

        #metoo

      • kbolino

        There’s no internal incentive for real change, so I’m going with the latter. But at a broader scale, external to them, respect for these institutions continues to fall.

    • db

      What is the google dot com slash amp? Is that something that google is trying to “amplify,” or is it a way for people to try to tell google to “amplify” certain results?

      • Nephilium

        I believe AMP is Google’s caching service for mobile web pages (mainly “news” or news-adjacent).

  28. Festus

    Youtube was actually a great help this morning. Front loader washer can be repaired with a $35 part, an entire afternoon and just twenty stitches! Fooking sheet metal. Just wait until I delve into the guts of the dishwasher… Judi’s away this weekend. If I can get the parts I know what I’m failing at!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Never do appliance work without kevlar gloves and sleeves on.

      • Festus

        Fuck off slaver! 😉

      • SDF-7

        Blood for the blood god!

      • Nephilium

        /looks down at the chunk of nail that a zester took off of one of my fingers this weekend.

      • db

        That’s living on the edge.

      • Animal

        You’re not my supervisor!

    • Drake

      Endeavor to persevere!

    • AlexinCT

      I replaced some parts on mine a year ago, and yeah, it was similar of an experience. My part cost $99 (the plastic seal for the front loader’s door), and I had to go through 3 different orders (thank god for returns) before finding the right one because the part numbers didn’t match, but I did take it apart and put the new ring in, and stop the serious leak problem (stupid kid left a pen in his pants and it put a hole through the thing) without having to replace a perfectly working high end front loader washer. I can attest to the sheet metal shit and the need for stitches (got only 5!)….

  29. UnCivilServant

    I have to interview someone this afternoon. Unfortunately for them I’m spending this morning fighting with Perl, which is putting me in a sour mood. I just want this thing to work, whycome perlites make their product so bad?

    • Q Continuum

      Because Perl is a tool of Satan.

      • UnCivilServant

        Ze German vendor’s product is built on it.

        I need to get the prerequisite modules running before we can even look at the main install.

        Of course they use every esoteric and random module under the sun, with convoluted dependencies not on a vanilla install. So I’ve been chasing libraries.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Perl is great for some things. The problem is that people have tried to do everything with it.

        Want to rip through text files and do stuff with it (using regex)? Perl is awesome!

        I’ll also take the craziness of perl over the whitespace shit in Python.

        But no matter what your feelings on perl and Python are, I think we can all agree that Java devs are the worse. Those guys really believe that everything should be written in Java and that is it.

    • Not Adahn

      perlites make their product so bad?

      Eh, it’s not bainite, but it’s still useful for impact applications.

    • kbolino

      I’ve seen bad code in every language, but Perl does have a certain tendency to attract the sort of code that has turned “clever” into a pejorative.

      • db

        It never ended; just nobody can figure out when the contest is being held anymore.

      • UnCivilServant

        The first round of qualifyers is finding the contest.

      • Rat on a train

        It was no longer a niche.

    • Rat on a train

      Play some Perl golf.

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t know what that is.

        Right now my brain is numb, I’m tired of staring at terminal windows, I need to move on to something else and come back.

        Plus, the modules installed appear for root, but don’t show up for the individual users. 🙁

      • UnCivilServant

        Note – I did check to make sure it was installing in /usr/local where it’s supposed to.

      • Grummun

        $ perl -V

        What’s the default @INC? Is it the same for root and non-root users? Are there any paths in @INC that are not world-readable? Is $PERLLIB or $PERL5LIB set for either root or non-root users?

      • UnCivilServant

        @INC covers the same directories for both. $PERLLIB and $PERL5LIB are set for the nonroot user, but are set to /usr/lib64/perl5:/usr/local/lib64perl5 – where the matterial is installed. those bariables are unset for root

      • Grummun

        If root can see the modules, presumably /usr/lib64/perl5 and /usr/local/lib64/perl5 are present in @INC. The last obvious suggestion I can make is check file/directory permissions to verify a badly-written makefile did not leave them readable only by root.

      • Rat on a train

        Perl is know for its many shortcuts lending to competitions to write code in as few characters as possible.

  30. Festus

    The new hot girl at the plant shaved her head bald over the weekend. I think she still looks quite fetching! Shame about the peacoat.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Does she keep asking about V’Ger?

      • Festus

        She’s really attractive but I don’t believe that I’m her type. Not that it matters, anyway. Kinda direct, takes no shit, feet on the desk sort? I’m still strangely attracted to her. Photons are free.

    • Sean

      Does the carpet match the drapes?

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Probably. I heard that, at least in the US, pubic lice have been mostly eradicated due to people’s change in groinal grooming.

      • Not Adahn

        I read that public lice are proof that in addition to H. Neanderthalis, H. Sapiens made a habit of banging other primates.

      • Animal

        Can confirm. Humans are somewhat unusual in having two species of specific lice; head and body (pubic.) The human pubic louse (Pthirus pubis) is closely related to the body louse specific to gorillas (Pthirus gorillae).

        Think on that over your morning coffee.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The lowlands get a little lonely.

      • Festus

        The highlands get a little too STEVE SMITHY!

      • Rat on a train

        What a lousy thought.

      • db

        Don’t be such a crab.

      • Festus

        Dudes. Check the eyebrows! My best friend from high school clued me in on that fact forty years ago. She was a she!

      • AlexinCT

        At least they didn’t tell ya to look at the underarm hair like some Euro chick once told me….

    • Agent Cooper

      Is she Persis Khambatta?

  31. The Late P Brooks

    How does union leadership survive that? No, I don’t just mean getting kicked out of the leadership slot – I mean how do they not get killed for that?

    That’s get-sealed-in-a-55-gallon-barrel-and-dumped-in-a-large-body-of-water behavior.

    We’ve become a nation of pussies.

    • kbolino

      We’ve become a nation of pussies.

      Yesterday, somebody mentioned Jeremy Andrus and Traeger Grills. I knew nothing about him, so I Googled. I respectfully submit this piece of horseshit in the Harvard Business Review for consideration. Not for what it says directly, but for what you can read between the lines.

      There’s plenty of non-pussies out there. They just get fired by MBAs who write self-glorifying thinkpieces in their business school journals about how “toxic” they were.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That reads like an Obama self-hagiography.

      • juris imprudent

        Pondering – could that be typed one-handed, or was it given as dictation and transcribed?

      • wdalasio

        MBAs who write self-glorifying thinkpieces in their business school journals

        Well, there are MBAs and there are MBAs. Generally, if you’re talking about an MBA where you’re actually learning some skill (e.g. finance, operations) you’re talking about a fundamentally different animal than an MBA where you’re mastering “soft skills” (otherwise known as how to BS).

      • Not Adahn

        There is no case study for what to do when employees start burning your assets, or a potentially mutinous mob begins to form.

        The Pinkerton National Detective Agency has a sad.

      • UnCivilServant

        Did they write up their case studies for the Harvard Business Review? I thought not.

      • SDF-7

        Jesus… so this turkey buys into the company, and immediately wants to outsouce manufacturing, outsource distribution and shipping and ends up gutting the company by hiring his friends from his last company first, then moving everything down to where he just-so-happens to live, firing everyone who worked there before because they were “toxic”.

        So in other words — he just wanted the IP portfolio and is fine slapping their logo on product someone else does all the actual work on. Modern American management model, ladies and gentlemen. Ugh.

        I rather suspect the former majority owner he had to buy out was “hostile” because of crazy ideas like keeping manufacturing local and not supporting the Chinese state or whatnot… not “efficient” enough for Mr. Harvard Business School who is so proud of his time at a headphone company he lucked into joining at the right time.

      • Not Adahn

        Notice how he was not at all concerned about losing “tribal knowledge” when he outsourced manufacturing. Only when he moved HQ.

      • UnCivilServant

        I mean, what could the people who actually make our product possibly know?

      • egould310

        The guys who make the grills are just dudes in a metal fabrication shop. There’s not alot of repartee going on there. Trust me.

      • db

        so this turkey buys into the company, and immediately wants to outsouce manufacturing, outsource distribution and shipping and ends up gutting the company by hiring his friends from his last company first, then moving everything down to where he just-so-happens to live, firing everyone who worked there before because they were “toxic”.

        Next step–sell the company to ConHugeCo at a 20% premium and move on.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’ve worked for that guy’s analogue before.

        It used to be they would slick their hair back and wear suspenders. Now they disguise their tactics with new age consultant speak and casual attire.

      • juris imprudent

        Well that was an interesting rabbit hole; no not Andrus, CWAA. Traeger history and trying to figure out who owned the company when I bought mine – either right before or more likely after they sold to the Florida asshole, but before they outsourced to China.

      • juris imprudent

        The whole thing is a great lesson in how American business destroys itself.

      • Gustave Lytton

        That was me. I read that in HBR originally. HBR is Gellman Amensia. Several of the companies I’ve read about in there have been portrayed utterly wrong and then next page, huh, that’s different. The semi anonymous obfuscated names and companies in many articles are more convenient than Friedman’s taxi driver.

        He’s pulled other crap too, like suing the actual Traegars for appearing in a pr photo announcing their hiring by a rival company.

      • Gustave Lytton

        My rant was triggered by the heavy advertising they’ve been doing to push their products.

      • UnCivilServant

        What company are they working for now?

      • B.P.

        Oh no. I now have only one free article left of the Harvard Business Review this month.

      • slumbrew

        I skimmed that yesterday and immediately developed an intense dislike of that dude. I suspect there are some alternate takes on those events.

  32. DEG

    Olympic officials said Monday the summer games next month in Tokyo can have as many as 10,000 fans and they all must be from Japan, bringing clarity to whether the international competition will have spectators amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Tokyo Olympics will set records for losing money.

    The authors explain that lockdown orders may have had lethal unintended consequences in their own right, such as increased drug overdoses, worsened mental health problems, increased child abuse, deadly delays in non-COVID medical care, and more. So, to find out whether stay-at-home orders truly helped more than they hurt, examining excess deaths, not just pandemic outcomes, is key.

    Down the memory hole.

    • Festus

      I can attest to the delayed medical treatment. It’s happening for me right now. My GP won’t allow visits. I nearly fell down the stairs two nights ago. The Canadian healthcare system is a cruel mistress.

      • Festus

        They won’t see me until I literally fall down the stairs.

      • db

        That really sucks. Maybe have Judi give you a few whacks with a broom and say you fell down the stairs.

      • DEG

        Sorry Festus.

      • Akira

        My GP won’t allow visits.

        But if they did, it would be FREE!!! /Leftist

        But seriously, I’ve tried explaining how the fabled “free” healthcare systems of Canada and Europe are not all sunshine and rainbows, and how people with cancer often die on a waiting list (because there’s no price system to motivate expanding the supply when it’s needed). The reply I always get is, “But at least they’re ON a list”.

      • R C Dean

        I can attest to the delayed medical treatment. It’s happening for me right now. My GP won’t allow visits.

        Are you assigned to a doctor by the state, or can you fire his weak goldbricking ass and see a different one?

      • Festus

        They are all the same and it is exceedingly difficult to find a Family Doctor up here. I’m fucked.

      • Agent Cooper

        You live in a prison colony.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    That Traeger thing is interesting. Thanks, kbolino.

    We spent a lot of time deciding whom to invite to move to Utah. By that point, after we’d closed the warehouse and trucking operations, we had about 90 employees in Oregon. We assessed each one on competency and cultural fit. We graded people as positive cultural leaders, neutral, or cultural detractors. If people were cultural detractors (and many were), it didn’t matter how competent they were—we didn’t want them. You’d think the detractors would be easy to identify, but that wasn’t always true. I remember one guy who worked in finance. I saw him as positive and upbeat, but when he left the company and did an exit interview with an external HR firm, I asked to see the transcript. I was shocked by how mean-spirited and negative he was.

    If someone was a cultural neutral and highly skilled in a job that would be hard to fill, we invited him or her to move. Only a couple were cultural leaders, and we invited them too. Among the 90 people were perhaps 12 or 15 we hoped would come to Utah; of those, five or six actually made the move. In general, the people we wanted had worked at the company for only a few years. They were ambitious to develop their skills, hungry to be promoted, and capable of moving between roles easily. The longer-tenured employees weren’t adaptable and had too thoroughly assimilated to the negative culture. We thought about this in terms of a quarantine: We needed to be certain we didn’t bring anyone who could infect the new culture we were trying to create.

    Groupthink, FTE!

    Somebody sees himself as a savior sent down to enlighten the filthy proles.

    • Not Adahn

      In general, the people we wanted had worked at the company for only a few years. They were ambitious to develop their skills, hungry to be promoted, and capable of moving between roles easily. cheap. The longer-tenured employees weren’t adaptable willing to take a salary cut down to the level of a new hire. Plus the accumulated vacation benefits!

    • EvilSheldon

      So he got rid of all the older, more highly paid employees who won’t put up with a lot of C-suite bullshit, and replaced them with a bunch of younger weak-willed peons who have no sense of boundaries and will happily eat whatever shit management dumps on them. What a surprise.

    • Gustave Lytton

      I saw him as positive and upbeat, but when he left the company and did an exit interview with an external HR firm, I asked to see the transcript. I was shocked by how mean-spirited and negative he was.

      Or you know, a professional who put on his game face at work and kept his opinions to himself instead of gossiping.

  34. The Late P Brooks

    We’ve hired lots of people since we moved—we’re now at 450 employees globally—and I spend time with every candidate before he or she gets a job offer. I don’t focus on their résumés. I want to understand how they think about risk taking and what skills they want to develop. I try to ensure that we apply a tight cultural filter to anyone we hire. We want to find people who are already living by our values.

    CEO-as-cult-leader- how lovely for him.

    • Ownbestenemy

      He is a real-life character out of Silicon Valley.

    • Festus

      Sounds nightmarish.

    • Not Adahn

      Although the majority owner had no operating role, he talked daily to people at all levels of the company and was aggressive and abusive. People were afraid of him, but they acted as if he were in charge.

      People thought the majority owner was in charge? No wai! And why would you use “but” to connect those clauses in the last sentence?

      • R C Dean

        why would you use “but” to connect those clauses

        Because you’re not very bright?

    • Not Adahn

      Every Monday morning we cook breakfast for the entire company, and we cook lunch together Tuesday through Friday.

      Vegan and gluten-free of course. And the cost of those meals gets reported to the IRS as income no doubt.

      • Hyperion

        But they charbroil the tofu!

    • R C Dean

      I spend time with every candidate before he or she gets a job offer

      If this is true (which I doubt), it means the CEO is spending its time on not-CEO shit.

      • UnCivilServant

        That’s because he doesn’t know shit about what makes a good company.

      • db

        He probably means senior level management hires. If that’s not what he means, he’s micromanaging the company culture to a degree Kim Jong Un probably would find stultifying.

      • R C Dean

        Hmm. I read “every candidate” to mean “every candidate”.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Aside from the CEO part, that sounds a lot like hiring at Netflix. So glad I washed out of a first round interview.

    • juris imprudent

      CEO-as-cult-leader

      My ex is working for Compass – a real estate brokerage masquerading as a tech play, and this is a perfect description of them. She is not of the body.

  35. DEG

    Too Local News Lazy Edition: Folks are lobbying to save the budget

    Four days before the New Hampshire House votes on a $13.5 billion two-year state budget that’s being described by its supporters as “transformational” in its reduction of spending and provisions for conservative policies, the plan’s fate remains far from certain.

    The GOP leadership of the House is expected to continue to try to negotiate with the conservative leadership of the New Hampshire House Freedom Caucus over the next several days – probably until the morning of the vote itself on Thursday.

    In politics, especially New Hampshire State House politics, four days can be an eternity. But for now, the situation remains highly uncertain.

    The state Senate will also vote on the budget Thursday, but it is expected to pass the package on a straight party line vote. The House is where the unpredictability lies.

    WMUR reported Friday that Gov. Chris Sununu spoke for more than an hour – complete with a PowerPoint presentation – to the full House GOP caucus. He was joined by key members of his administration and a group of conservative supporters, including former New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien and his former chief of staff, Greg Moore, who is now state director of the conservative issues group Americans for Prosperity.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    And why would you use “but” to connect those clauses in the last sentence?

    Obviously, the HR department was insufficiently robust to force him to allow the fleas to run the circus. Tragic.

  37. ignoreLander

    Japan to cap their Olympic spectators at 10,000 and allow only Japanese residents.

    On one hand, they are the most racist country on the planet, thinking of their own citizens first before the entire rest of the world.

    On the other hand, that means all the money spent there will be from their own country, negating ANY benefit they might get from hosting a global event.

    I’m torn about what to feel about this….

    • Not Adahn

      Not entirely all. Surely coca Cola and McDonalds will be buying ads at the venues.

      • Akira

        Oh yea, all the companies who “spoke out against systemic racism”. Guess we’ll get to see if they put their money where their mouth is. Surely, a company that cares so deeply about racial equality wouldn’t buy ads at an explicitly racist event just because there’s a ton of worldwide exposure, would they?

      • db

        It’s not racist, it’s nationalist.

      • ignoreLander

        It’s not racist, it’s nationalist.

        Nationalist = populist – Orange Man = KKK = Nazi = genocide = violence = White supremacy = systemic racism = Capitalism = “Democracy” (Not Republic) = Uncle Tom = APOCALYPSE!!!!!!!!!!

        Why do you hate peoples of color?

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Back to that guy from Traeger:

    Who would ever have guessed a caring, enlightened guy like him would not-so-secretly view corporate employees as chattel slaves whose inmost thoughts should reasonably be subject to his control?

    • Hyperion

      P Brooks has already broken this thread into so many pieces that all the king’s men can never put it back together again.

      • waffles

        I love the commitment to not threading comments.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    Every Monday morning we cook breakfast for the entire company, and we cook lunch together Tuesday through Friday.

    On pellet stoves.

    Muh CARBON FOOTPRINT!

  40. The Late P Brooks

    So in other words — he just wanted the IP portfolio and is fine slapping their logo on product someone else does all the actual work on. Modern American management model, ladies and gentlemen. Ugh.

    Juice the numbers, cash out, move on to the next “rescue” mission.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Of course, there is tremendous resistance to acknowledging the fact that the sacrifice we all, to varying extents, endured evidently accomplished nothing—and may have even left us worse off. But we must acknowledge and grapple with this painful truth to ward off similar mistakes in the future.

    Stop it. You’re killing me.

  42. Festus

    That stupidly expensive front-loading washing machine just worked perfectly again. Imma go blow up LG’s headquarters complex.

    • AlexinCT

      Give it to em Festus!

  43. The Late P Brooks

    I don’t want my kids to have to meet new people, so I’ll fire all those guys and relocate the company.

    • Festus

      To the flesh-pots of Thailand?

    • Hyperion

      I’m so woke, let’s get out of this blue shithole, move to Utah, and build a progressive utopia! Many woke, much brave.

      • waffles

        Utah feels more and more like California each passing year. Complete with the noveau riche tacky bullshit stretching from Ogden down to Provo.

      • Hyperion

        I’m sure. Montana wasn’t big enough for all the proggy locust swarm. The only way to stop them I guess is for them all to transition so they can’t pro-create. Either that or they all just become so stupid that they cease to exist.

        In less than 2 decades, at the rate we are going, the USA will not be able to compete with most of the rest of the planet, in any way whatsoever. Paraguay will look like champions of industry compared to us. There will be nothing but the 3rd world poor and a few isolated boardrooms full of Harvard Business School graduates, sitting around trying to figure out what went wrong. Was it global warming or racism to blame?

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Or it wasn’t real socialism. Preaching to the choir but this really needs to be repeated.

        “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

        This is known as “bad luck.”

  44. Endless Mike

    South Park CAN satirize this, and they did

    • Hyperion

      Like the one comment said ‘South Park used to be parody. Now it’s a documentary’.

    • Ownbestenemy

      As did Futurama.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Voice in the wilderness

    The courage to stand up against prevailing winds is rare indeed, even for those who can afford to do so. To be sure, I knew plenty of economists who were against the lockdowns. They wrote articles and said so. It’s true that they were a tiny minority but they did exist. They also took enormous professional risks in daring to defy what quickly emerged as mainstream opinion.

    I recall one interview with economist Gigi Foster in New South Wales in which she raised the problem of the costs. She was exceedingly reasonable. One interviewer asked her: “Why do you want people to die?” Another interviewer interrupted her and yelled: “Oh here we go with tradeoffs!” as if she had violated a taboo by daring to suggest that there was more to life than merely avoiding this one single pathogen, all freedoms be damned. Finally it was plainly said to her: “The debate is finished!”

    Clearly the debate was not and is not finished. It’s just begun. We can look all over the world today and see enormous suffering inflicted by lockdowns while there is scant evidence at all that closures, masking, restrictions, stay-at-home orders, and hospital rationing achieved anything in the way of disease mitigation. And even if it had, do we not have a moral obligation to compare the results with the costs?

    What you see now is many of the dissidents starting to speak out against lockdowns, expressing quiet regret, while the proponents seem gradually to be fading from the scene. One by one. Their Twitter feeds are ever more quiet. This is precisely what one would expect given the carnage all around us, and the complete failure of anyone to be able to demonstrate that they achieved their ends at less cost than alternatives.

    Of all people, the economists should have known. If they did know, not enough spoke out. The whole scene reminds me of the Prohibition period during which all the leading economists stepped up to defend and rationalize the policy that everyone knew was on its way. It took more than ten years before it became stunningly obvious how goofed up was that opinion all along, that it completely failed to think through what economists are trained to think about, namely the relationship between means and ends and the tradeoffs involved in every policy decision.

    Let us hope that it will not take ten years this time. Not only economists but also medical professionals and especially politicians need to step up and admit where they were wrong and work to make sure nothing like this is repeated again. If it does happen again, it should not happen with the blessing of economists, even if they have high-end positions at Ivy League universities.

    Don’t bet on it.

  46. juris imprudent

    This was pretty interesting, on the possible transformation of the Republican party into a more blue-collar base. I say possible because it isn’t at all clear to me that this is a done deal – the Republican leadership is beyond skilled in fucking up a winning formula.

    Trump transformed the political landscape by tapping into a powerful desire for freedom from criticism or censure — a desire that Portnoy shared, and which has only grown more intense and widespread as the panopticon of social media becomes the primary stage for not just national politics, but civic life at every level.

    Oddly enough, despite the inherent thirst for conflict that it brings, the ascent of Barstool-ism within the Republican Party can be chalked up to ideological diversity within the GOP. What could unite free-market libertarians, revanchist Catholics, Southern evangelicals, and working-class Reagan Democrats but their shared hatred of… actual Democrats?

    With that as the party’s guiding principle, and no clear policy agenda to speak of — the 2020 RNC literally did not have a new policy platform — those willing to trash the Democratic cultural regime most loudly and consistently are firmly in command, with more staid Republicans forced to at least provide cover, if not actively follow their cues.

    • Drake

      The DNC is now the party of government and “minorities”. The RNC becomes they party of whites or it gets replaced by one.

      It ain’t pretty but it is inevitable.

      • PutridMeat

        I don’t think it’s inevitable, at least the second part, “party of government” that is. Conservatives/libertarians/Republicans can make, and have made, inroads with ‘minorities’ and there’s no reason to expect that can’t continue. Uphill climb, just as selling/defending liberty always is, but I think it’s unfair to characterize ‘minorities’ as being inevitably Democrats, or locked into the same group as “party of government”.

      • R C Dean

        Not inevitable, but I think its the way to bet, especially as the Dems get more aggressive with their racialism.

      • EvilSheldon

        It’s worth pointing out here, that ‘whiteness’ as defined by the woke mob has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Rather, ‘whiteness’ is having the learned behavior sets that allow a person to be successful in a market economy.

      • invisible finger

        It’s the non-productive versus the less-non-productive.

      • Agent Cooper

        It’s class, not race.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    Oh no. I now have only one free article left of the Harvard Business Review this month.

    Use it wisely, B P. Use it wisely.

  48. Pope Jimbo

    I have a good friend who was bemoaning the fact that his company is once again going to trade shows and that he is charge of a booth for a show coming up soon.

    He had been hoping that the Rona had killed off trade shows and he would no longer have to deal with them. No such luck.

    We were talking about the fact that the trade shows rarely lead to new sales leads or other positive developments. They are just a huge time suck for the company.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      I just remember a story from a friend of mine. A Chinese gentleman was asking my friend’s manager about a new process they were using and wondered how they did it. The manager replied “We have elves do it.”

    • UnCivilServant

      Trade Shows are not about sales. They’re about schmoozing and putting entertainment on a corporate expense account.

      Not for you plebs, mind you. Try to make sales.

      • Nephilium

        Same as the big tech “events”. I had a boss come back talking about how awesome it was to go to the MS one in Atlanta (many years back), and they had a huge Guitar Hero set up and everything. Little was said about any actual improvements of technology.

    • waffles

      I like tradeshows when they require no effort or input on my part.

      • R C Dean

        I find other people’s tradeshows to be fascinating. Maybe my favorite so far is when my lawyer group shared a convention center with a funeral and mortuary trade show.

        Plus, nobody at trade shows knows/cares if you are one of theirs, so you can harvest the giveaways.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        *patent lawyer salivates and rubs hands together*

        Our trade shows are an absolute boon for us. Wanna protect the most front of mind business valuable IP? Breeze through the booths at the trade show and introduce yourself to anybody you haven’t met before.

        “We’ll pay you a lot of money if you spend a half hour documenting the coolest parts of this product and emailing them to me” usually gets a good response from the R&D folks.

        Of course, we can never justify sending the patents team to the trade show. That would just be asinine. ?

  49. The Late P Brooks

    We were talking about the fact that the trade shows rarely lead to new sales leads or other positive developments. They are just a huge time suck for the company.

    I hear there’s big money to be made designing/fabricating display booths.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Also in abusing expense accounts.

    • Drake

      Like everything else in Marketing, it’s impossible to prove and disprove.

    • EvilSheldon

      Not for a while.

  50. Festus

    Signing off dear friends. Hope your day goes well as we career toward next Winter. Good tidings to all!

  51. juris imprudent

    And this is pure genius

    In Virginia, before we were taken over by ill mannered barbarian hordes, we had a zero % sales tax. Then in 1966, it was 2%, in 1968 it increased to 3%. At the time, all the really nice beautiful people said “it is only a 1% increase!” No, it is a 50 % increase over the existing tax being paid! Nice liberals feel that they don’t need to learn math as long as they “care.” (It’s easy to “care” when your “caring” is done with other people’s money). These are the same people who get their utility bill cut off for non-payment and then call the power company and tell them they should be given a break because they adopted a stray cat.

    • Surly Knott

      Link failure

    • CPRM

      and that’s a 100% increase, isn’t it?

      • CPRM

        wait, I was thinking it went from 1 to 2, not 2 to 3…

    • juris imprudent
    • Rat on a train

      Now sales tax is 5.3 – 7% depending on location.

      • Tundra

        8.025% in Minneapolis. Think we’re getting our money’s worth?

      • Rat on a train

        You only pay sales tax if you actually pay. You’ve had more free shopping events than we have.